Poland

In Macron's battle for Europe, Trump is a foe

President Emmanuel Macron seemed to many to be speaking for Europe, even the free world, when he denounced nationalism as the “opposite of patriotism” and the enemy of peace and morality as President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin looked on. He wasn’t.

Why it matters: Trump’s antagonism toward Europe, and his immense unpopularity there, would seem to offer Macron the ideal foil as he seeks to shepherd the EU into a new consensus that security threats from the likes of Russia, economic competition with giants like China and the unreliability of the U.S. necessitate a strong, unified Europe that can throw its collective weight around. But the nationalists on his own continent are undermining that vision — and they have a powerful friend in Washington.

“The French might have been presumptuous, or a bit too clever, in seeing Trump only as an opportunity,” Célia Belin, a former French diplomat now at Brookings, tells me. “It comes with a cost. The cost being the division of Europe.”

The divisions aren’t just ideological. Erik Brattberg of the Carnegie Endowment points out that Macron can have a “divisive effect” when he criticizes Trump — or infuriates him by framing his proposed EU army as a counterweight to the U.S. — because many countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, “view the U.S. security relationship as an existential issue.”

The big picture: Saturday’s remarks were part of what Macron sees as a battle for the soul of Europe with nationalists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Italy’s Matteo Salvini. And it's increasingly clear that, on that front, Trump is far from an ally.

The only European country Trump praised in September’s UN General Assembly address was Poland, which he said was fighting for “sovereignty.” Poland was also fighting the European Commission, which a day earlier had formally accused it of undermining the independence of the judiciary.

One senior Western European diplomat recently grumbled that the only European ambassadors in town who can get a meeting at the White House are from Poland, Hungary and Italy.

Belin says Trump’s “clear favoritism” for those countries can exacerbate the divisions between them and Brussels, or Paris.

Macron knows that the more he tries to pull the EU together, the more he pushes some members away, and the more he risks isolating himself. He may, therefore, press pause on the most ambitious aspects of his European agenda.

The bottom line: “Macron wants to be a strong leader that Trump disagrees with but respects for being strong,” Belin says. He doesn’t simply want to stand against Trump, alone.

In Bolsonaro, Bolton finds a dangerous ally

In a vituperative speech about Latin America on Thursday, national security adviser John Bolton referred to the Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan governments as a “troika of tyranny” and their leaders as "the three stooges." Perhaps most notably, after making vague promises to pressure the three repressive regimes and announcing an imminent increase in sanctions on Venezuela, Bolton called Brazil's recently elected right-wing authoritarian, Jair Bolonsoro, a “like-minded” leader for the Trump administration.

Why it matters: There is a clear affinity between the demagoguery of Trump and Bolsonaro, who are often facilely compared, but the latter's is hardly the sort of liberal government that would make a good ally against the oppressive “triangle of terror.” In fact, as a growing body of political science research has argued, Bolsonaro’s approach is in line with the strain of anti-democratic populism that has sprung up in Turkey, Poland, Hungry, the Philippines and Venezuela under former President Hugo Chávez.

In those countries, leaders have tapped deep popular anger to run against what's perceived as a discredited, corrupt political elite. Once in office, they steamroll the checks and balances on executive power and undermine the independence and effectiveness of the government bureaucracy. As leaders from Italy’s Mussolini to Venezuela’s Chávez have shown, authoritarian populism knows no ideological bounds. Instead it shares a common disregard for limits on power, human rights and dissent.

What to watch: We don’t know what will come of Bolton's seemingly empty threats about the troika tyrants having "met their match" and more sanctions, which he likely made to drive Florida’s Cuban-, Venezuelan- and Nicaraguan-American voters to the polls on Tuesday. Much of it will probably prove to be only campaign rhetoric, but in the meantime, let's hope that the administration exercises more caution with the avowed homophobic, misogynistic and militaristic strongman in Brazil.

Christopher Sabatini is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, executive director of Global Americans and a non-resident fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute.